If you have an AMD or NVIDIA graphics card, you may not be able to boot successfully from the Linux Mint installation DVD or USB stick. Or you may have been able to boot successfully and install Linux Mint, but it won't boot successfully after installation.

The common solution for both problems is to tell the Linux kernel to temporarily use an older method to talk to your graphics card, and after you have successfully installed Linux Mint to install a different driver for your graphics card. The steps for this are described below, including screenshots. You can click the screenshots to zoom in, if needed.

If you can't boot successfully from the Linux Mint installation DVD or USB stick.

At the 10 second countdown screen during boot, press a key.

You will be shown a small menu. Using the cursor keys of your keyboard highlight the second entry in the menu ("Start in compatibility mode"), and press enter to continue. Note that you can also do an integrity check of the installation image here (if you suspect your DVD wasn't burned correctly or damaged), and a test of your machine's memory.

If you followed these steps, but you are still unable to boot successfully, please make a new topic for that and ask for help.

If you can't boot successfully after installing Linux Mint.

During boot hold down the left shift key to get the GRUB boot menu to show.

Press the 'e' key to edit the boot parameters. Using the cursor keys of your keyboard scroll down to the line that starts with "linux" (red box in the screenshot) and go to the end of that line (red arrow in the screenshot).

Add the boot parameters "nomodeset xforcevesa" (without the quotes, see red box in the screenshot). As you type, it will wrap to the next line on the screen and show a backslash character at the end of the previous line. That's fine. Press Ctrl+X or F10 to continue to boot.

If you followed these steps, but you are still unable to boot successfully, please make a new topic for that and ask for help.

After successfully booting:- for Linux Mint 13 and earlier, open the Additional Drivers program from the menu;- for Linux Mint 14 open the Software Sources program from the menu, then go to the Additional Drivers tab there.- for Linux Mint 15 open the Driver Manager program from the menu (see: http://www.linuxmint.com/rel_olivia_wha ... intdrivers).See what graphics card drivers are available for you (my graphics card doesn't need additional drivers, so I can't show any in the screenshot). If you are sure of the one you should install go ahead. But if you need further help with this, please make a new topic in the Graphics Cards & Monitors forum and include the output of the command "inxi -SGx" run from the terminal.Note that if you have a NVIDIA Optimus graphics card (Intel IGP + NVIDIA GPU), you need Bumblebee. That goes beyond the scope of this topic, but see here: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Bumblebee. If you have a AMD Hybrid graphics card (Intel IGP + AMD GPU), I don't know the right steps except switch either the one or the other off (in the BIOS to "on-board IGP only" for Intel or "discrete mode" for AMD). For more help if you have multiple graphics cards, please make a new topic in the Graphics Cards & Monitors forum.

Just in case this helps someone from spending the hours I did looking around.. I have the issue where the Mint 14 live CD worked, install went OK but then on booting to HDD there was no grub menu and just a black screen and blinking cursor. Convinced it would be a graphics card thing I played around with editing grub with replacement to "no splash" but no joy.

Then I found an old post about mint 11 (I am trying to install mint 14) and xenopeek suggested boot-repair.

In my case, my LM14 install went fine, but when actually using my system I would get frequent and highly annoying X-server crashes. Most people reading this might immediately realize that the problem was not loading the NVidia drivers. But it took me a little while. As soon as I found the 'Additional Drivers' tool, and installed the NVidia drivers, my problems disappeared. (Actually it also seems like my system speeded up a bit, and the graphics are much more crisp, even at the same display resolution as before). I suspect there are a lot of less experienced LM users out there who might not realize the importance of installing these drivers (and how simple it is). Or maybe I'm the only one. Seems like this should be mentioned in the LM User's Guide.

osprey wrote:In my case, my LM14 install went fine, but when actually using my system I would get frequent and highly annoying X-server crashes. Most people reading this might immediately realize that the problem was not loading the NVidia drivers. But it took me a little while. As soon as I found the 'Additional Drivers' tool, and installed the NVidia drivers, my problems disappeared. (Actually it also seems like my system speeded up a bit, and the graphics are much more crisp, even at the same display resolution as before). I suspect there are a lot of less experienced LM users out there who might not realize the importance of installing these drivers (and how simple it is). Or maybe I'm the only one. Seems like this should be mentioned in the LM User's Guide.

osprey

How did you load these drivers? I have dual NVidia's and I think they're what's causing my issue. Please help?

I had the same problem, but strangely enough only with the Cinnamon version. The live cd workend perfectly, but after installing only black and blank. The Mate version went better although the thumbs on the desktop flickered sometimes, but that has gone. Strange that there apparently is a difference between the two live CD's.

Mint 13 (Maya) just gave me a blue "Failed to start X server (your graphical interface)..." screen, but then I found your tutorial and thought this would fix the problem, since I have a Nvidia graphics card. I followed your instructions and, YAY, got the startup screen. Then I went into the "Additional Drivers", picked the recommended Nvidia driver, and installed it. When I restarted the computer, though, it was back to the "Failed to start X server..." screen (just bigger this time). Once again tried to restart and edit Grub as per your instructions, but just keep getting the blue "Failed... " screen. Since it's an older computer, (HP Pavilion dv9000) I thought I'd try an older Mint version. I'm still running Mint10 on my old Dell Inspiron, so I tried that. It installed no problem, but mint update gives me all kinds of "Failed to fetch http://archive/ubuntu... etc." messages, and I am unable to install the driver for my broadcom wireless card (= no wireless -- that's not good). It seems from the forums that this is due to Mint10 being discontinued. So now I'm stuck. I don't want to throw away the computer, and I DON'T want to use Windows (been there, done that). Any suggestions?

osprey wrote:In my case, my LM14 install went fine, but when actually using my system I would get frequent and highly annoying X-server crashes.

Me too. I only had problems after I made LM14 64-bit (Cinnamon) boot into a command shell*. I thought the problem was with the X server and had no idea that it had anything to do with the video driver. I discovered the Additional Drivers tab by chance, and when I installed the Nvidia binary driver from here my X server problem suddenly vanished!

*Ironically, one of the reasons I wanted to do this was to install the official driver from the Nvidia site.

Ok, liveboot with nvidia gtx 550 ti graphics card1. hit spacebar after bios screen to boot into grub display2. hit tab to display a command line (displays live boot path)3. backspace over the two dashes at the end of the command line4. as above add nomodeset xforcevesa5. press enterthis will get you a 800x600 screen

Thanks for these posts. I would add a couple of points (I run multiple screens on nvidia cards).

1. Once you are running after forcing the nomodeset boot then the approach I found the easiest approach to getting the Nvidia drivers working was to: a) open Synaptic and remove the nouveau drivers, b) close synaptic which probably isn't necessary, c) open synaptic again and install the Nvidia drivers and settings items (I use 3.10). Then and only then, restart, after which all should work with the Nvidia drivers running. d) Now configure your desktop with the Nvidia X Server Settings manager.

2. After this worked I was still getting infrequent screen freezes where the mouse would still work but I would (sometimes gradually) lose control of my windows and finally have to exit hard. There are lots of forum posts but I finally found an Ubuntu solution which I refer to in this link http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=49&t=129864. All then worked well until I installed a new CPU / mother board after which I added the extra blacklist items described in that post.

I've just added Mint 13 to my HDD next to Mint 14. Mint 14 keeps logging out randomly despite trying all the 'fixes'.

Any hoo - Mint 13 usb install. I had to use the nomodeset xforcevesa to get to a working gui. I installed the nvidia drivers and purged nouveou then rebooted......... But the same issue occured. Sot in the CLI I used nano to bring up the xorg.conf and entered "Nvidia" where it said "vesa" and saved it.

It now boots to the GUI login and all seems well at this point. I hope so any way. I have gone off Ubuntu a bit. I just don't like the new GUI. I have tried mint on and off for a few yearsand if mint 13 doesn't muck me about I will be a long term user.

It seems an age since I first installed Ubuntu Hardy Heron. System is updating as we speak so fingers crossed.......... Mint is a very nice loking and functional bit of kit.